Librarians un-desked: CiL2014 Day 1

It is so good to get away from the job for just a short time to see the bigger library-in-the-world picture at Computers In Libraries 2014. I wasn’t a fan of the theme of this conference – Hack the Library – but thanks to Dr. David Weinberger for letting me envision hacking as a tool for change. [For me – as the keynote goes, so goes the conference – well done Dr. Weinberger!] His “Hack the Library” keynote – reminding us to white-hat hack, NOT black-hat hack NOR Bozo-hack – hit just the go-forth-and-do-good tone.

We need to 1) think of libraries as portals and platforms and 2) further linked open data and 3) incorporate visual tools like Graph Search. According to Weinberger, if we hack the libraries we hack the future. If we do it with transparency, collaboration, relationships, and community – then we provide an infrastructure and empower the building of knowledge. Curation becomes an integral part of the knowledge process and not a separate activity.